Naturligt och övernaturligt under medeltiden

The Wiles Lectures

by Robert Bartlett

Exploration of how medieval people categorized the world, concentrating on the division between the natural and the supernatural.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, Medieval History, Religion, History Of Science

148 pages, Hardcover

First published March 17, 2008

About the author

Robert Bartlett, CBE, FBA, FRSE is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Mediaeval History Emeritus at the University of St Andrews.

Reviews

[Gigi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shoutout to the previous reader who wrote their marginalia in a highlighter so pale yellow they must have also been the black-light wrangler for their local SVU.

[Ryan Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book with a colleague. It led to some fascinating discussions.

But it has the failing of most compilations of a series of lectures in that it does not present a coherent or systematic exploration of the topic in question. In this case, that's really too bad, because the topic is particularly interesting.

Lecture 1 showed that the very concept of the 'supernatural' had to be developed over time as scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages explored the limits of the 'natural'.

Lecture 2 showed how those scholastics tried to merge their study of the natural with the supernatural, both in the context of their study of geography and astronomy.

Lecture 3 showed how differently various scholastics could view such supernatural phenomena as the night-flying of witches and the supposed existence of people with dog-heads on the other side of the world.

Lecture 4 showed how even a very 'scientific' thinker like Roger Bacon could think about astrology and magic as 'natural' processes.

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief but interesting rummage through scholastic philosophers' and mediaeval explorers' ideas of the natural, the supernatural and the nature of the differences between them.
I like Robert Bartlett as a television presenter and as a writer. This book is too short for him really to get his teeth into the subject but his humour still comes through.
Be warned, while the book is 170 pages, the last 22 pages are bibliography and index, and a large proportion of many of the pages is taken up by Latin footnotes.

[Joel Olsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

jag brukar tycka om idéhistoriska böcker men jag kände att det gick lite trögare den här gången. överlag skulle jag säga att boken är ett förnuftigt val för att få en kort översikt om tankar kring naturligt och övernaturligt under medeltiden. Jag föredrar lite mer djupgående böcker.

[N.W. Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A group of lectures converted into a monograph. Bartlett's research is informative if a bit lacking anything new to add. Good work but definitely not as groundbreaking as the Making of Europe.

[Sanjay Prabhakar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting material but rather brief and lacking in cohesion.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read and reviewed this book for my medieval history class.

I chose to read this book because of its length, or rather, its lack thereof. I know, I know: that is not a good excuse to read a book! However, it seemed like a good idea at a time when I was struggling with a math class and taking another class that involved a lot of writing. Needless to say, when I went through the list of books to choose from and typed the candidates that I had narrowed down into the search bar on Amazon.com, the fact that this book consisted of only 170 pages (148 of which consist of actual content) made it shoot to the top of my list.

If I could describe chapter one in one word, that word would be dull. You won't believe just how unbelievably dull it is. One might find themselves wishing to have their eyes gouged out with a teaspoon rather than having to pick up this book again. Okay. Perhaps that was an exaggeration, but then again, maybe not. The first chapter devotes itself to the numerous meanings of the word natural, the origin of the use of the term supernatural, and the varying viewpoints on what falls into those two categories (which was one of the author's main points). As I stated before, it was a complete and utter bore. I began to wonder how I would get through the book, let alone produce eight pages on the blasted thing. However, I was determined to read it anyway because I had paid almost thirty dollars for it.

When the author started discussing eclipses and the way they were perceived by some people within the Middle Ages, the book started getting better. Chapter three, which discussed beliefs in various creatures throughout the Middle Ages, was, in my opinion, one of the highlights of the book (and contained the kind of content that I was expecting to read when I first read the summary on the back of the book).

Honestly, I'm not even sure I would recommend this book even outside of an assignment setting. Although the latter half of the book is interesting, I imagine someone would bludgeon me after enduring the first chapter and the beginning of the second. In any case, I would not recommend it to someone that needs to do an eight-page book review. If one does not count the 'Works Cited' section of the book, it contains only 148 pages of actual content, and many of those pages are taken up by lengthy footnotes, and some are adorned with large pictures. As a result, there is actually very little content with which to work. The author is obviously quite knowledgeable on the subject at hand and argues his points well, but he also tends to abuse the use of quotation marks. Furthermore, people picking up this book expecting to read more about medieval thought on the existence of various creatures may be disappointed, as that is mostly confined to chapter three.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting discussion of how the natural and supernatural was defined and how beliefs varied.

In particular Bartlett shows that belief in the power of the heavens to influence events could in fact be seen as perfectly natural and part of God's plan. The main conclusion is that beliefs varied and that actually the idea of witchcraft being real and something to be feared developed later in the middle ages and produced the witch-hunts of the early modern period. Medieval thinkers actually thought that witchcraft, such as flying through the air and passing through walls to visit people in the night, were but fantasies that some women had. These fantasies might be inspired by Satan but were not real. The belief in such fantasies was legislated against.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four lectures by Bartlett on medieval understandings of natural and supernatural, concepts of the universe, "marvels" like dog headed people, and Roger Bacon. Bartlett is always interesting and incredibly well-sourced: a rare scholar of the old school who values primary documentation and so has mastered a vast body of medieval literature. The lectures are diverse enough that someone looking for a focused discourse on the titular topic might be disappointed to find the wide spread of subject matter, but each piece is quite excellent.

[Maan Kawas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book, which addressed the natural and supernatural in the Medieval age (e.g. marvels, miracles, and magic), the geography and the inhabited world, the world as a machine, the moon and eclipses, and people with dog head, people with one foot, or people whose faces are in their chests, and so. I found the book interesting, as it showed how people viewed and interpreted things differently throughout history, which in turn affected their beliefs, conduct, and attitudes.

[M F]

A surprisingly quick and easy read compared to most of the other academic books I've read recently -- probably because the chapters started out as lectures. I sort of wish it was obligatory for all academic writers to read their books aloud / give them as lectures, so that they'd be obliged to make them actually comprehensible and cut out some of the ridiculously long and jargon-filled sentences...